Tell me about the 1E AD&D DMG


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kenobi65 said:
I am jealous. What kind of polearm did Gary draw? A guisarme-voulge? A glaive-guisarme? A bohemian earspoon? A lucern hammer? :D
I have the original Unearthed Arcana, and Gary's piece in there on polearms was a real eye-opener. Good stuff.
 

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I love the 1E DMG, although I think the cult that has grown up around it, in a way, builds it up too much. But it reeks of a sword and sorcery atmosphere that the current edition doesn't quite evoke in the same way.

Great art, crazy tables and ideas, lots of little lore gems tossed out here and there.

I am among that crazy cult, as I see no DMG better or more useful! :-) Do I not bleed when you cut me? :P

--Ghul
 


Ilium said:
I have the original Unearthed Arcana, and Gary's piece in there on polearms was a real eye-opener. Good stuff.

Indeed. An eye-opener that the Father of the Game was a wee-bit obsessive about a particular weapon group! Which was why, in good humor, I asked him to sketch one for me in my DMG! ;)

--Ghul
 

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I love the 1E DMG, although I think the cult that has grown up around it, in a way, builds it up too much.

This is my thought on it. It does have some cool charts for dungeon dressing (from sounds to common items) and a decent city encounter chart (the "wandering harlot" subsection is kinda funny, but the chart in general is still pretty useful). There are nice overviews of types of hirelings, mercenaries, and governmental types. The brief synopses of the attitudes and outlooks of the main PC races is good. The way artifacts are handled is very interesting. There are a lot of good, useful bits of info to be gleaned from it, even today. It'll take some sifting through, as it's not as well-organized as the newer 3e DMG.

However, there is a big warning I feel I should give - 1e and 3e are significantly different games. The 1e DMG dealt with a lot of the crunch in the game that 3e covers in the PHB. There is a lot that can be used from the 1e DMG, but there is a good portion of it devoted to rules specific to 1e AD&D. I'd recommend it, regardless. I'd say to even take a look at HackMaster's GameMaster's Guide, which preserves a lot of the 1e DMG's best stuff - including a lot of "Gygax-speak" as well as adding material that is also easily portable into 3e. But, again, there is a significant portion devoted to rules specific to HM.
 

ghul said:
Heh. Bought mine with my paper route money back in 1981 and consider it the finest book in my collection. Just this year I had the pleasure of getting it signed by the following:

* Frank Mentzer (yeah, he didn't work on this volume, but he is a D&D legend)
* Rob Kuntz (another D&D legend)
* Darlene (she even did a sketch in it for me of the Egyptian goddess, Lady Sekhmet!)
* Gary Gygax (he had something to do with the book, and I got him to sketch me a pole-arm inside!)

Needless to say, that DMG (City of Brass, 1979 version) is no longer for game play. I bought on eBay the later version with the cover of the sage in green robes. If you are jealous of my signed DMG, you're old school at heart! ;)

--Ghul

Yep, I'm jealous! OTOH, Gary states that he is still perfectly willing to autograph items if you send them to him with a self addressed return envelope. I'm seriously considering this.

As to the 1e DMG; having grown up playing 1e, I consider it the best of all the editions (of course YMMV I'm not saying it is the best for everyone, just the best for me and my play style). Gygax has a unique writing style that can seem intimidating and stuffy to some but I personally find it very enlightening and eloquent. I still think the artwork inside is some of the best fantasy art around. The artists that TSR had in the stable back in the day have forever cemented in my mind what fantasy should look like (again YMMV). Lots of crazy tables, cartoons, random dungeon generator, there's a lot there and a lot to like if the older editions are what you like to play.
 

I'll just add one more voice recommending you find a used bookstore (or ebay, if you must) and pick one up. If you can find one cheap, pick up a 1e Players Handbook to go with it. They're not exactly well-organized or indexed, so have lots of little scraps of paper handy to use as bookmarks; you'll need 'em, as there's loads of useful info to be found that can port to any version of the game.

Lanefan
 

ghul said:
If you are jealous of my signed DMG, you're old school at heart! ;)

--Ghul

Nah, Gary signed my copy of "Greyhawk" (the original brown book supplement for the white box) back at GenCon 18. Not jealous, but hopefully old-school at heart. ;-)

And originally, I had the first-ever sold copy of Temple of Elemental Evil, signed by him as well. I ended up selling that piece of Gygaxana for an embarassingly small sum more than a decade ago...

Thul
 

Some trivia:

There are three bare nipples. Two on page 180 (a mermaid) and one on page 230 (a succubus).

At least two posters on ENWorld take their names from artwork in the 1e DMG - PapersAndPaychecks and Emirikol. The picture of Emirikol the Chaotic is a classic, showing a rogue magic user zapping town guardsmen. The inn in the picture 'The Green Griffon' might be a nice reference to drop if it's not too well known. The infamous wandering harlots table is on the opposite page.
 

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